


Heavenly Light

by EvanescentHalestorm



Category: Super Smash Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel/Demon Relationship, Angst, Betrayal, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt, F/F, F/M, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Mother-Son Relationship, Subspace Emissary (Super Smash Brothers), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, World of Light (Super Smash Brothers), split narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvanescentHalestorm/pseuds/EvanescentHalestorm
Summary: It happened so fast. One minute, the cliff. Then, a flash. Then, darkness.Or; What if World of Light had an actual narrative?
Relationships: Bayonetta (Bayonetta)/Palutena (Kid Icarus), Cloud Strife/Richter Belmont, Samus Aran/Solid Snake
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. Prelude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's give the story a bit of preamble, shall we?

"Don't let a single one get away." Fox's words echoed throughout the once-barren landscape, resonating in the ears of said landscape's hundreds of now-occupants.

It all happened so fast. Too fast, one could argue.

One minute, the cliff. A band of warriors assembled by the greatest leaders in all the worlds to fight off a potentially existential threat. Even the most weathered of warriors in the group were taken aback by the sight: Hands. Master Hands, to be specific. A whole fleet. An armada of Hands looming over the army, the not-unfamiliar white-gloved forms made all the more ominous by the sheer number of them.

"We'll each need to take down about ten," spoke the Hero-King. Among the group, affectionately referred to by Princess Daisy as 'Smashers', Marth was known as many things. A master tactician, a brilliant swordsman, an inspiring leader. But a talker, he was not. As such, every word that left his mouth was met by a crowd of diligent ears, snapped out of their revere by the uncommon sound of the Archanean King's tenor.

"Stow your fear. It's now or never." Only royalty could speak to royalty with such assertiveness. Princess Zelda, the highly-regarded queen of Hyrule. Opting out of her combat-oriented disguise, known as 'Sheik', Zelda's hands began to glow with a sort of magic energy granted to her by the Triforce of Wisdom, kept in possession of the Hylian Royal Family for generations.

"We'll win this. I know we will." Lady Palutena's trusted general, Pit always maintained an affect of positivity, even if the confidence portrayed in his words was betrayed by the slight lilting of his voice. It seemed that wherever Pit went, whatever he said, he could never escape the Hylian Queen's legendary side-eye.

The cliff was packed with warriors, friend and foe alike. All hailing from different worlds, different times, the army was brought together by the actions of one Samus Aran. Upon receiving word from one of her liaisons in the Galactic Federation's Center of Intelligence of potential disruptions of spacetime, she began her investigation, ultimately culminating in what was supposed to be the final face-off against the disruptions' Composer. In addition to the warriors Aran had familiarized herself with during her days in the series of interdimensional combat tournaments known as _Smash Brothers_ , the army was joined by reinforcements hailing from each of the Smashers' worlds. Lady Palutena's army of Centurions were joined by King Bowser's personal militia, referred to as the Koopa Troop. In addition, several new faces, including Ryu's childhood friend Ken, Lucina's father Chrom, and a duo of heavily-armed children known as Inklings, were joined by a sea of magical creatures called Pokemon. Lastly, and perhaps most concerningly, were the personal armies of Kings Dedede and K. Rool, the former a friend/rival(?) of Kirby and Meta Knight's and the latter the longtime adversary of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, who, in addition to their whole simian squad, had spent years at war with K. Rool's army of Kremlings. And while Dedede had proven himself to Samus during Tabuu's Subspace Campaign some years back, K. Rool struck her as a much more... Shady character.

Still, gazing up into the squadron of Hands, no one was feeling particularly bogged down by minutiae.

High in the sky, accompanied by the sea of Hands, a bright, glowing orb surrounded by rainbow-colored wings loomed over the army like a monolith. Even as a faceless, featureless orb, each Smasher felt the being staring into their eyes.

"So this is what being intimidated feels like," thought Samus, decked out in her Varia Suit.

Next to her, a sudden spike of tension shot through the air. Turning to her left, Samus saw Shulk, a comrade from a place known as Bionis. His gaze appeared to be fixed out towards the horizon, unfocused and hazy. "Shulk?" she asked, only half-expecting a response. Samus can't say she's ever seen anything quite like this before. That being said, today has been a bit of a day of firsts.

Suddenly, Shulk turned back to the group. Looking past the army's leaders of Mario, Link, and Fox McCloud, the young man makes eye contact with the voracious ball of pink puff that spent half of the afternoon asleep in Incineroar's arms.

Suddenly, the Hands began to dissipate, annihilating into a flowing blue energy, only to be sucked in towards the monolithic being that hung over them like the Sword of Damocles.

Samus had a bad feeling about this.


	2. There's A Light...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bayonetta wakes up in a dark place.

Silence.

Crushing silence. The kind of silence that reverberates through a noisy crowd after a gunshot snaps their attention to its source. And accompanying the silence? Darkness. She isn't sure how long she's been like this, or how long it will be before some force in the universe deems her worthy of rejoining physical space. All Bayonetta knows is that there is no end in sight. No light at the end of the tunnel or grand horizon to head towards. All she has is a silence so deafening, so crushing, so all-consuming that she has no choice but to lay back and succumb to its vice-grip like the Third Sphere mongrels she'd spent twenty years hunting down.

She remembers everything. One moment, blue light being absorbed by that... Thing that Samus had called her out of her own world to kill. The next, radiant beams of blinding light emitted in all directions, like tendrils grappling onto everything in their reach. Her friends were consumed one after another in a chaotic frenzy. The first to fall was Link, who had managed to deflect a few of the beams with his shield of supposed great importance. Alas, the being's onslaught was unrelenting, and the swordsman was quickly consumed by a third, speeding beam, his body eviscerated and torn apart by the concentrated energy. The next to fall was Samus, whose arm cannon had jammed long enough for her to be consumed by another on of the beams.

One by one, Bayonetta watched her friends fall, their bodies burned to ash and blown apart like leaves. Not even Zelda's spells were strong enough to deflect the beams, which struck the Umbra Witch as funny because every time she tried to catch the Elvish queen with her Love Is Blue custom handgun set (Rodin's influence), her climactic bullets would be reflected back at her with ease. Rodin had given Bayonetta the guns some time prior, a personal favor from his friend Donatella Versace, who had been looking to get into the luxury handgun business for quite some time. Bayonetta had never met the woman, but after seeing the design of the beautiful guns, she agreed to be Versace's guinea pig, testing the weapons in live theatre.

Speaking of, where were her guns? Or her hands, for that matter? Where were her arms, her legs? Why couldn't she feel... Anything? Bayonetta had never experienced complete sensory deprivation before. Although Madama Butterfly was known to employ the tactic when torturing the angels Bayonetta delivered to her, she'd never had to the misfortune of experiencing the phenomenon for herself. Sight obscured. Sound muffled out. Touch M.I.A. Scent? Nada.

What about taste? Focusing on where she remembered her taste buds to be, Bayonetta was able to pick up on... Something. Was that copper? With a hint of melted butter...

Oh great. Her mouth is bleeding.

Well, there's one thing the Umbra Witch can cling to. The taste of blood flowing through her mouth is now the only company she has in this realm of darkness. She can't even feel her tongue. Her olfactory senses aren't even co-mingling with her taste buds like they normally do. All she has is an iron-filled liquid attempting to clot around the one organ she can be sure she still has.

As the blood flows over Bayonetta's mouth, she begins to take note of which taste buds light up and where. What was once the dull, distant taste of a drip in the back of her mouth is beginning to spread over the surface of her tongue. The plasma-charged liquid flows over her array of taste buds, systematically lighting up various conjoining segments of her tongue in a semi-linear path.

Slowly, Bayonetta becomes aware of the sheer volume of liquid filling her mouth, the flavor of the metallic-tasting blood overwhelming her taste buds. Her sense of taste begins to reach into the darkness, as if grasping for an olive branch in a pitch-black rainforest. And suddenly, a connection. Two synapses snapping together, magnetized. In a split-second, neurons begin lighting up her brain, firing off in a million different directions. More connections. Two more synapses connect. Then four. Then eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. One hundred twenty-eight.

In an instant, Bayonetta doesn't just taste the blood in her mouth. She feels it. She feels the life-saving liquid funneling down her throat, filling her lungs, making it impossible for the Umbra Witch to breathe.

The sensation of touch systematically spreads out from her lungs and into the rest of her body. She feels her arms restrained by chains, her feet bare and hanging in the air. Her sense of orientation returns, and she realizes she has been bound and strung up, suspended on her back, her head hanging in the air in the same way as her feet. Suddenly, she misses the silence. She misses the darkness, the sensory deprivation. The sensation of touch begins to feel malignant, like tumors constricting her every attempted movement.

Suddenly and without warning, the chain gives, and Bayonetta begins to fall through the air. The rattling metal orchestrates her rapid descent, only to be immediately halted by the impact of her body hitting the floor. The remainder of the chain falls to the ground beside her, as if a mocking portrayal of her limp form.

The pain of the fall is quickly overridden by the pain of the fluids in her lungs. With great effort, Bayonetta rolls onto her side, only to cough up and spit out what feels like a liter of blood. Struggling to breathe, the Umbra Witch begins to open her eyes, only for the blinding light to worsen her already perilous condition. Closing her eyes once again, breath getting shorter and shorter, she begins to feel around for something, anything she can use to get out of this situation.

Finally, her hands land on something firm and sharp. A knife. It'll have to do. Sitting back, Bayonetta grasps the knife and guides it into the side of her lower back, careful only to make as small of a puncture as she needs. With the blade in position, she digs the knife into her back, before removing it and letting a deluge of blood pour out of her lungs.

Instant relief.

Slowing her breathing, Bayonetta begins to open her eyes. Slowly at first, she raises her hand to cover her face, allowing her eyes to adjust to the artificially-lit room. She is alone, her only companion the chain that once suspended her in the air. Guns M.I.A, the Umbra Witch begins to examine her surroundings. She is in a concrete room, walls lit up by blocks of LED's. The only objects in the room are an operating table and a wheel-mounted side table filled with medical tools. Holding onto the wall for support, Bayonetta rises to her feet. It had been a bit of time since she'd found herself locked in a room and bound up in chains, and even longer since said bondage had been involuntary.

Finding her footing, the Umbra Witch examines what she had assumed to be a knife. In truth, it is little more than a makeshift puncture weapon, fashioned out of seemingly-scavenged scrap metal. The construction is crude. Primitive. It is an appalling weapon. However, given her current circumstances, it would have to do. On the weapon's hilt, a small portion of a serial number, scratches indicating someone had attempted to file the identifying digits off. Odd. The hilt looks to be decorated with yellow and black emergency tape, providing the makeshift weapon with a bit of grip. "That should come in handy," the Witch thinks to herself. While not yet having an immediate plan of escape, the thought of plunging this knife into the heart of her captor brings a small smile to her face. The thought of allowing her dried blood to rust the metal, so as to increase her prospective victim's risk of tetanus, crosses her mind, but before she can work out the minutiae of her one-woman biological warfare, she is interrupted by the sound of a heavy metallic thunk. Turning in the direction of the noise, Bayonetta finds a portion of the wall, visually indistinguishable from the rest of the room, slowly creaking open.

Instinctively, the Umbra Witch ducks behind the door, her makeshift weapon gripped tight in her hand as she waits to plunge its sharpened edge in the throat of whoever is no-doubt coming in to restrain her. After ten seconds of nothing, however, it becomes clear that whoever opened the door has no intention of stepping into the room.

Gripping the knife in an offensive position, Bayonetta flips over the top of the door to pounce on whoever has been keeping her captive in this chamber. Ready to strike, the Umbra Witch comes face to face with... No one. The doorway is empty. The connecting corridor, also empty.

Examining the door, Bayonetta finds a series of mechanical gears attached to what appears to be a locking mechanism. It becomes clear to her then that whoever has been toying with her has been doing so from behind a monitor. In any case, she's gonna have to leg it a bit if she has any hope of finding this fucker.

Gazing down the hallway in front of her, a flashing LED light catches her attention. A moment as the Witch examines her options. "Oh, bugger all," she says decisively. Weapon in hand, Bayonetta takes off down the corridor.


	3. Through the Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucas fights his way through a monster-filled forest.

Lucas isn't sure how long it's been since he woke up. Five minutes? Five hours? Who's to say. All he knows is that he is now running for his life through a mist-covered forest, fleeing the onslaught of ravenous creatures that have been tormenting him ever since he regained consciousness.

How many creatures are there? Hard to say. Hot on his heels, Lucas has barely had a moment to orient himself, let alone enough time to get a good look at the animals chasing him. At least, he assumes they're animals. All he has to go off of are the few visual clues he's been able to gather over the course of his chase. There are at least six of them, that he can be sure of. White, with patches of red on their fur. They run on all fours and snarl like rabid animals. Decidedly not canine, the animals more closely resemble the Carpet Monsters and Barrel Men that used to inhabit Osohe Castle.

Whatever they are, they're unrelenting, and they're fast. All Lucas can think is run. Don't slow down. Don't trip up. Just keep moving forward. It helps him to imagine that he's running from muttshrooms along the Tazmily Railway. The thought invokes a sense of morbid nostalgia in the boy. Running from these beasts, he finds himself longing for the days of him and Boney versus the world, running from chimeras and working to expose Fassad for the villain he was. An odd feeling to have, considering the fact that those years were undoubtedly the worst of his life. Still, he doesn't shut down the thought. It's nice to have something to distract him from the snarling teeth getting closer and closer to plunging themselves into his flesh, or the fact that he keeps almost tripping on uprooted trees because he can barely see two feet ahead of him.

It's times like these that Lucas wishes he kept more mementos from his travels in Nowhere; one smack of the Vigor Stick and these animals would be done for. Alas, all he has are his fists, calluses faded from years of rest. Waking up alone in the trees, he had realized that he had been drained of his PP, another wash of morbid nostalgia as he remembers the time he and his friends had been caught in a similar situation during their travels, washed ashore on the beach of Tanetane Island. At least then they'd been able to find a few edible mushrooms, although whether or not they had been worth the resulting trip is a debate Lucas still finds himself coming back to from time to time.

The boy is pulled out of his thoughts as he crashes through a bush, stumbling out the other side to find himself perilously close to falling off of an unexpected cliff. Realizing this, Lucas stops his retreat just in time, skidding to a halt as he comes face to face with the cliff's edge. A stone, kicked up by Lucas' sudden stop, flicks over the side, dropping further and further down until eventually crashing into the forest below, as if to communicate how certain his death shall be in the event he decides to take the plunge.

Turning around, Lucas sees the creatures emerge from the forest. Unlike the ravenous demeanor they had previously communicated during their chase, the speed, or lack thereof, with which the animals now make their way out into what can hardly be considered a clearing portrays an unexpected level of intelligence. They have him cornered.

Lucas can see clearly now. There are eight of them in total. While the animals had previously looked vaguely feline in the brief moments where he was able to catch a glimpse of them, the boy now realizes how truly mammalian the creatures are. Muscular, with bushy tails and two long claws on each paw, as if a bear somehow managed to breed with a tiger and then splattered the baby with red paint. The red pattern on the white fur reminds Lucas of a singer whose albums were always stocked in with the vinyl back at the Mansion. "Ziggy Stardust" is what Bayonetta called him, one of the few times the Umbra Witch ever spared the boy more than a passing glance.

The animals move to surround Lucas, flanking him on either sides. For a moment, Lucas considers his options. Surely no fall could be worse than being torn apart and eaten alive by glam rock tiger bears. The biggest of the creatures emerges from the bush and steps forward and snarls, as if challenging Lucas. The look in its eye is one of dominance, encouraging him, demanding Lucas to fight back. When the boy doesn't move, the animal lets out a roar. "ZANGOOSE," the creature shouts. On cue, the animals on the flank lunge at Lucas, responding to the commands of their leader.

Without hesitation, Lucas jumps, causing the creatures to crash into each other. The pack of animals runs to the cliff, growling and snarling and clawing after Lucas' descending form. As he falls through the air, Lucas begins to question his choice. With a bit of distance between himself and the animals, their howls ringing in his ears as he falls through the air, he entertains the idea that perhaps they were merely looking to give him a warm hug. As Ionia would say, "The whimsical musings of orphans."

The treeline growing closer and closer, Lucas is snapped out of what he believes to be his final thoughts as his descent is suddenly interrupted by the feeling of something gripping onto the back of his shirt. Taking a moment to process the fact that he isn't lying dead on the forest floor, Lucas looks around to find the person, or thing, that has just saved his life. Looking up, the psychic boy does a double take as he comes face to face with a familiar red serpentine reptile gripping his shirt's collar by the mouth, hanging off a ledge on the cliff's face.

Through gritted teeth, the Rope Snake speaks. "Bet on me once, shame on you. Bet on me twice..." His voice trails off, and Lucas' gaze travels up the length of Rope Snake's body to find his tail in the mouth of a very familiar-looking dog. And resting on the dog's back, a duck.

Man's best friend indeed.


End file.
